Elon Musk: Bitcoin Has an Amazing Structure, and Paper Money Will Be Put Aside

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc. and active entrepreneur in the field technology, said on Tuesday, February 19, 2019, on the advisory firm’s ARK investment podcast that the Bitcoin cryptocurrency (BTC) is quite amazing, and that compared with paper money, cryptocurrencies are a better way of transferring value.

Tesla Motors Inc. is an American automotive company and manufacturer of electric cars and necessary parts for electric trains. It also manufactures Lithium-ion battery packages for automotive companies such as Toyota and Daimler AG. This company was founded in 2003 by the collaboration of Elon Musk, Martin Eberhard, Jeffery B. Straubel, Marc Tarpenning, and Ian Wright, and its headquarters are located in Palo Alto, California. Tesla stock is traded at the NASDAQ stock exchange. Currently, Elon Musk is serving as the chief executive officer and chairman of the board at Tesla Inc.

Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, which currently belongs to eBay, and SpaceX, is also the CEO and CTO of SpaceX.

Will Bitcoin Be the Only Local Cryptocurrency on the Internet?

In response to this question, Elon Musk said that the structure of Bitcoin is quite amazing, but also said that the high amount of energy needed for computations is a disadvantage of cryptocurrencies in general and so he proposed there be limitations imposed on the production of cryptocurrencies. Currently, the production of this growing cryptocurrency consumes a lot of energy.

He stated that, “we are trying to increase the speed of developing sustainable energy,” and that he believes the use of Tesla resources in the field of cryptocurrencies is practical. He further added:

“Cryptocurrency removes the monopoly and control of paper money (…) paper money will be put aside, and cryptocurrencies will undoubtedly have a better performance in transferring value.”

In February of last year, Elon Musk wrote on his Twitter account that he only has 0.25 Bitcoins which he received from a friend many years ago. His other assets other than this 0.25 Bitcoins are zero.

Large financial institutions have previously pointed to the unique status of Bitcoin as a store of value or digital gold. Michael Novogratz, founder of the cryptocurrency financial bank Galaxy Digital and also the former partner at Goldman Sachs, said that Bitcoin would turn into digital gold and a valuable store such as gold, which is not like U.S. dollar, the Chinese currency, or other fiat currencies, and has its own independent status. But this independent status comes with a price, but this reasonable price is only natural for such independent status.

Jack Dorsey, founder, and CEO of Twitter, also said in early February this year that Bitcoin acts more like money compared with other cryptocurrencies that seek more general aims and distributed computations. He stated that in some cases Altcoins are a good idea, but he prefers to focus on one currency and trading side.

He’s known for having a “Bitcoin will turn into Internet’s main currency” attitude.

Bitcoin’s alternate currencies, or Altcoins, are cryptocurrencies that were released after Bitcoin and introduced themselves as better alternates for Bitcoin. These cryptocurrencies were made in the main framework as Bitcoin and are most similar to one another.